Kiara Alvarez, Ph.D.

The current person in charge of ICE's procurement for detention is a GEO Group executive who ran the company's immigration detention portfolio. He was granted an "ethics waiver" from DHS allowing him to hand out contracts to GEO in his new role.

Trump’s New “Prison Camp” Threat Unleashes Fury Even in MAGA Country The next phase of ICE’s big ramp-up: a nationwide network of vast detention facilities. But guess what? Even parts of Red America are saying no.

Remarkable: Trump's planned migrant prison camps are hitting deep resistance in red areas. In Virginia's partly rural Hanover (+26 Trump) opposition is intense. GOP leaders in other states are opposed.

Voters are rejecting mass deportations big time. 1/

(new piece)
newrepublic.com/article/2060...

Screenshot of an X.com post by The Associated Press (@AP) stating that dozens of immigrant families protested for better treatment behind fences at a Texas detention facility, where a 5-year-old Ecuadorian boy and his father were sent after being detained in Minnesota. Below is a video thumbnail showing a crowd gathered outdoors along a fenced walkway; many people wear bright blue or red outerwear, and some hold signs.

After being held in two of them as a boy, I fought for decades urging America to never again build concentration camps and put human beings in them. It breaks my heart to watch this happen twice now in my own lifetime.

Like I'm seeing people ask why people who've signed deportation papers are being held in detention, or why people going through the "legal" process are being removed. And part of the answer is messiness, but the other part is $. It's profitable.

I think what a lot of folks miss is how profitable deportation is for the corporations involved & the politicians they're backing.

Holding people, physically removing them, is cost for the taxpayer & profit into the pockets of the worst people you can imagine.

America's "dual state" is a racial state ICE's terrors draw on an American traditions of racial violence

David French argued Renee Good's murder is an example of the US having two sytems of law: orderly for friends & belligerent for foes. @victorerikray.bsky.social corrects him: US law has always promised fascism for non-whites & those who stand with them.

groupthreat.com/p/americas-d...

Abolishing ICE isn’t enough – it’s time to center people’s humanity | Heba Gowayed and Victor Ray It’s far from radical to reject a system predicated on violence – despite what thinktanks might claim

Abolish ICE is not enough.

It's not about training -- Ross who killed Renee Good was a TRAINER. It's not about body cams -- we saw Alex Pretti killed with our own eyes.

We have to abolish the idea that violence ever made us safer, before it's too late.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Eastern European here. My entire childhood is filled with stories of abductions, torture and murder - from terror campaigns under Soviet rule and the Nazi regime before then. This kind of violence and suppression is exactly what we all hoped to be free of.

Have you visited Mama Koko’s? It's a vibe. I’m lounging on a sexy golden sofa, sipping something robust, sweet, and rum-forward. The cocktail is a work of art, crimson-tinged with a crisp stroke of blue algae brushed along the inside curve of ...

Mama Koko’s?

baltimorebeat.com/have-you-vis...

Abolishing ICE isn’t enough – it’s time to center people’s humanity | Heba Gowayed and Victor Ray It’s far from radical to reject a system predicated on violence – despite what thinktanks might claim

ASA members Heba Gowayed @hebagowayed.bsky.social @huntercollege.bsky.social and Victor E. Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social (University of Iowa) note that ICE's violence isn't a "mistake," but a reflection of how the agency is designed to operate. @theguardian.com

Students walk out of Little Village schools, hold march in protest of recent ICE activity Little Village high school students walked the streets calling for an end to ICE and deportations in Chicago.

In an over 2-mile walk, hundreds of students made their way from Little Village Lawndale High School to the Little Village Arch, denouncing recent ICE action and supporting immigrant communities.

Lots of lovely folks want to cook for neighbors, fill community fridges during SNAP shutdown but are intimidated. A mutual aid group in Flatbush, Brooklyn has been feeding 80+ people every single week for a year and a half or so now. Nobody is born knowing how to cook for 80, so here's our guide!

Or a to do list where the items say things like “follow up with” and it’s just a set of initials that you can’t place

Noooooooo 😫😫😫

Read This When Things Fall Apart by Kelly Hayes | Pilsen Community Books A bundle of letters to activists and organizers on the frontlines in catastrophic times from Let This Radicalize You co-author Kelly Hayes In social movements, some heartbreaks are all but inevitable.

My publisher’s been very patient. I’m not doing everything I said I’d do to promote this book (out in a few weeks) because I’m an organizer in a city under federal attack. My days are full and emotionally exhausting. Any help getting the word out means a lot. It's a book people need right now.

We need a bigger national spotlight on this building raid, fam. Agents dropped from helicopters onto the roof. Citizens and non-citizens alike were dragged from their homes in the night. People who weren't kidnapped during the raid had their belongings seized after the fact. This is madness.

Crime rates in all three cities have gone down, and in Baltimore at astounding levels, in part by treating crime as a public health crisis, rather than a "need more cops" crisis. popular.info/p/the-secret...

The secret to Baltimore's extraordinary year This April, Baltimore saw five homicides.

For everyone who has ever asked, on seeing my Baltimore homicide charts, "How did they do that?"

Planting seeds in uncertain times: Holding the line on health equity in HIV Oni J. Blackstock, MD, MHS, outlines key practices and strategies to continue the work of health equity in HIV in the next installment of the new Health Equity Series.

🌱 "During uncertain times, like the current moment, we can either retreat or move forward and plant seeds of change. This moment calls on us to plant seeds."

🌱 Honored to share my blog post in @idsainfo.bsky.social's #HealthEquity Series where I outline key practices and strategies...

I read about this here, along with a ton of other great news stories about species being saved, environments being protected, people living healthier lives, and so much more. Do yourself a favor:
bsky.app/profile/fixt...

I Randomly Decided To Pay Off A School’s Lunch Debt. Then Something Incredible Happened. “I immediately wondered if this was real.”

"[It's] as if we’ve collectively agreed that fiscal responsibility is best taught through the ritual humiliation of second graders."

This is an excellent piece, not just about school lunch debt, but how we manage the relationship between working for systemic change and mitigating immediate harm.

This is scandalous. The El Paso SPC is one of the few ICE detention centers owned by ICE itself. Members of Congress cannot legally be turned away from ICE facilities when conducting oversight. Yet these emails say Noem herself is deciding when and how Members can conduct oversight.

I would have preferred to quietly conduct my oversight responsibilities as I always have, but ICE chose not to follow the law.

These ‘guidelines’ are illegal, and that deserves public scrutiny.

This week, ICE illegally denied me entry into a processing facility in my district, and today, they released a statement saying I “[gave] the appearance of a political stunt intended to generate publicity rather than pursue genuine oversight.”

I have some thoughts.🧵

It doesn't matter if they are ever coming for you.

It was always ever already too much that they were coming for anyone.

Smart move, and not surprising; the litigators surely knew this was an option and had the amended complaint ready to go.

(5/5)

🚨 It’s time to flood the zone.

NIH scientists just took a huge risk speaking out. Now it’s our turn.

📜 Read the Bethesda Declaration
✍️ Sign the Public Letter of Support
👯‍♀️Follow NIHers doing the work: @nihvigils.bsky.social

Read and sign here 👉 www.standupforscience.net/bethesda-dec...

🚨ATTENTION MOMS🚨

Friday, May 30th at 3pm

Meet me outside of the CDC with your pregnant bellies, your babies, your toddlers, your strollers, your signs, and your baby gear.

We are standing up for science and vaccines!
@standupforscience.bsky.social

RSVP: actionnetwork.org/events/moms-...

Care about suicide research? Then you should care about how we measure suicide-related constructs! Very proud to share this viewpoint led by @kirstenchristensen.bsky.social, recently accepted at J Psychopathology and Clinical Science 🥳

osf.io/preprints/ps...